Attending;

Discussion

Will provided an overview of the role of semantics in linking together the different datasets for the drought SBAs and Water Quality SBAs for Doug (and Lionel).

Mattia:
Demonstration of the EuroGEOSS broker, including a visual graphical plot linking together related concepts within the query expansion being carried out within the EuroGEOSS "discovery
augmentation".

Cristiano: The semantic component in the EuroGEOSS query expansion is based upon SKOS relations, as provided by a different thesaurus for each SBA.The water thesaurus was provided by Brad Lee (at CSIRO). How is this different from the CUAHSI ontology?

Will: The CSIRO ontology was partly developed, using the CUAHSI ontology, based upon efforts of Simon Cox and others. Clearly, you have already prepared some EDO-drought related terminology for the SKOS relations; can this be examined in order to find concepts that overlap between the CUAHSI water ontology and the water thesaurus currently loaded in EuroGEOSS broker?

Veronica:
can users modify the ontology?

Mattia & Cristiano:
users can make extensions or add new ontologies. Tools work on only one
repository at present, but more federated operation can be implemented
in the future.

Mattia: There is also another user mode in
which the tool automatically expands a simple query.

Will:
Yesterday's Biodiversity telecon included an overview of a model being developed that links Holdridge life zone variables (minimum Temperature, Maximum Temperature, and Precip) to life zone boundaries. The output of this model is a suitability weighting factor that can be mapped. The use of the model is analogous to using a model to either classify an area under severe drought or moderate drought (a drought indicator) or to a drought impact susceptibility weighting factor (that can also be mapped). As in the case of the Biodiversity Working Group, we have to explore the role that the EuroGEOSS broker can play in the modeling effort, i.e., retrieiving input datasets for a decisionmaker user, etc.

Mattia:
there will be a connection built between the broker and WPS for BDCC.
This could be used for drought as well if a WPS can be implemented for
index calculation.

Josh: how does the connection to the
GEOSS Clearinghouse work?

Mattia: Client component works
with discovery component which has a semantically extended OpenSearch
interface and works on top of a SPARQL search component. This latter
component can federate to other CSW components such as a clearinghouse
as long as they support ISO Profile records and query-support.

Will:
can the thesaurii in the repository be browsed?

Cristiano:
the repository can be queried through SPARQL endpoint, but the current
endpoint is protected to avoid damaging queries (i.e., security). A page will be / is put
up listing the contents (ontology / thesaurus packages) of the
repository in lieu of query access. Cristinao will send a UID (user ID) and password to Will so that the water thesaurus can be browsed.

Will: Will survey the
repository contents to see whether the controlled vocabulary (i.e., the thesaurus) needs to be extended to cover NIDIS, the Canada Drought Response Initiative, and Princeton global drought monitor.

Josh: Water quality for closure
decisions is still being drafted, but has four main stages: Model
discovery and calibration / Process initiation from weather predictions /
Decision calculation and communication / Calibration refinement from
post-decision data collection.

Veronica & Damien:
EO2HEAVEN looked for a Mozambique partner for data collection without
success. Now looking to partner with University of Makerere in Uganda
where there also are cholera issues.

Will: We can send the Gulf of Maine draft scenario to Damien and our EO2Heaven colleagues.

Will: We shall try to engage Steve Grebs again on water quality and link the global drought telecon effort (a spin-off of the Winnipeg DRI drought conference and the North Caroline drought impact conference) so that global drought visualization and dataset query support is possible.

Actions:

Call next Friday to dig into water quality more deeply
Doug to reach out to Steve Grebs IGWCO Water Quality Cluster